Bronze sheep you can sit on. A cabbage perched on bird legs. A pair of geese holding up a glass dining table. The world of François-Xavier and Claude Lalanne is one where fantasy meets function, where flora and fauna become furniture, and where everyday objects are reimagined with surrealist charm. For decades, the French duo – known simply as Les Lalanne – crafted a whimsical universe that challenged the boundaries between fine art and design.
While their work has long attracted tastemakers – from Yves Saint Laurent and Karl Lagerfeld to the Rothschilds – demand for their pieces has reached new heights in recent years, making them a rare bright spot in a market otherwise marked by caution.
At Sotheby’s recent Important Design auction in New York, Grand Rhinocrétaire II (2003) – a monumental bronze rhinoceros that cleverly unfolds into a writing desk – achieved US$16.4 million, more than three times its high estimate of US$5 million. The result marked the second-highest price ever paid for a François-Xavier Lalanne work.
Just last month, Bar aux Autruches (Ostrich Bar) sold for €11.1 million (around US$12 million) at Sotheby’s Paris after an 11-minute bidding war. At the time, it was the second-most expensive Lalanne piece ever sold – until last week’s rhino overtook it. His current record stands at €18.3 million (US$19.4 million), set by Rhinocrétaire I, a unique 1964 sculpture, at Christie’s Paris in 2023.
So who was Les Lalanne? How did they evolve from postwar Parisian bohemians to auction-house darlings? And why does their market remain one of the strongest in contemporary design?
Lot 105 | François-Xavier Lalanne (1927-2008) | Grand Rhinocrétaire II, gold patinated bronze, brass and leather
Executed in 2003
Number 1 from an edition of 8
128.9 x 262.3 x 61 cm
Provenance:
- Galerie Mitterand, Paris
- Acquired from the above by the present owners, 2003
Estimate: US$3,000,000 - 5,000,000
Sold: US$16,422,500
Auction House: Sotheby's New York
Sale: Important Design
Date: 12 June 2025
In 1952, François-Xavier Lalanne held his first painting exhibition in Paris. Born in 1927, he had moved to the city at 18 to study art, settling in Montparnasse, then a lively hub of artistic and intellectual life. His neighbors included Constantin Brâncuși, who introduced him to members of the Surrealist circle – among them, Max Ernst, Man Ray, and Marcel Duchamp.
Before that, François-Xavier had worked as a guard at the Louvre, where he spent long hours studying the museum’s Egyptian collections – stylized depictions of animals like hippos, cats, and rhinos that would leave a lasting impression.
At that first gallery show, François-Xavier met Claude, his future wife and lifelong creative partner. She had trained at École des Arts Décoratifs, one of France’s most prestigious art schools, with studies spanning sculpture, painting, and architecture.
Not long after, they began sharing a studio in Montparnasse, and François-Xavier soon abandoned painting for sculpture. The two married in 1967.
François-Xavier Lalanne and his wife, Claude
The couple with the iconic motif of a flock of sheep
From the beginning, the Lalannes shared the belief that art should be part of daily life – a radical stance in 1960s Paris, where New Realism and monochrome abstraction dominated the art scene.
While they worked side by side, they rarely collaborated on the same piece. Claude gravitated toward botanical forms, while François-Xavier explored the animal kingdom. Their works, however, shared a common thread: a blend of surrealist imagination, impeccable craftsmanship, and practical function.
François-Xavier Lalanne
In 1964, they held their first joint exhibition, Zoophites, at Galerie J in Paris. Among the works François-Xavier presented was Rhinocrétaire I – a nearly life-size bronze rhinoceros sculpture measuring 120 x 283 x 70 cm, which opened to reveal a writing desk, mini-bar, and even a hidden safe. The piece would later set the artist’s auction record.
The rhinoceros became a recurring totem in his work, inspired by both Albrecht Dürer’s 1515 engraving and his early exposure to Egyptian art at the Louvre. Versions of the animal appeared throughout his career, culminating in Grand Rhinocrétaire II – the first of eight cast in 2003, when he was 76 years old – and the centerpiece of Sotheby’s recent sale.
That edition was acquired by its seller in 2003 from Galerie Mitterrand in Paris. The last time Grand Rhinocrétaire II appeared at auction, the seventh edition sold for €5.5 million with fees on a high estimate of €3 million at Sotheby’s Paris in 2022.
François-Xavier Lalanne | Rhinocrétaire I | Sold: €18,335,000, Christie's Paris, 2023 (Auction record for the artist)
Albrecht Dürer’s 1515 engraving, Rhinoceros
Claude, meanwhile, showed the first version of Choupatte (“cabbage with feet”) – a full cabbage cast in bronze and perched atop slender bird legs. Conceived as a gift for François-Xavier, the motif gained cult status when a variant appeared on the cover of Serge Gainsbourg’s 1976 album L’Homme à Tête de Chou – named after another of Claude’s works, The Man with the Cabbage Head, which Gainsbourg owned.
“I had taken a mould of a cabbage and just wondered what it would look like with legs,” Claude once explained. “The moment I saw it, it felt right. It had emotion.”
Today, versions of Choupatte appear in museum collections around the world. In October 2023, a large-scale bronze titled Très grand choupatte sold for €4.97 million (around US$5.3 million) at Sotheby’s Paris, setting a new auction record for Claude.
Claude Lalanne
Claude Lalanne | Très grand choupatte | Sold: €4,972,400, Sotheby's Paris, 2023
It was this exhibition that first drew the attention of Alexander Iolas, the Greek-born dealer known for introducing Surrealism to American audiences and for staging Andy Warhol’s first solo show. Later that year, Iolas gave Les Lalanne a show in his Paris gallery, placing their work alongside Surrealists like Max Ernst and René Magritte.
In 1967, he brought their work to the United States, with a presentation at the Art Institute of Chicago and a follow-up exhibition at his New York gallery. Thanks to him, Les Lalanne’s circle soon expanded to include elite collectors like the Rothschilds, Pauline Karpidas, and Gianni Agnelli.
The exhibition also caught the attention of a fresh-faced 25-year-old Yves Saint Laurent, who had just left Dior to found his own fashion house. He and his partner, Pierre Bergé, were particularly taken with François-Xavier’s Rhinocrétaire I, and the encounter quickly led to two major commissions.
François-Xavier Lalanne | BAR "YSL" | Sold: €2,753,000, Christie's Paris, 2009
The first was a sculptural brass-and-crystal lounge bar by François-Xavier, begun in 1964 and delivered the following year for their apartment on Place Vauban, opposite the dome of Les Invalides.
A decade later, Claude created a monumental set of gilt-bronze mirrors that lined the walls of their Paris apartment on rue de Babylone. Earlier in 1969, she also collaborated with Saint Laurent on his Empreintes collection, casting bronze breastplates from the chest of the model Veruschka, which were then incorporated into his couture gowns.
When Christie’s held the landmark auction of Saint Laurent’s estate in 2009, it included both the Bar “YSL” and the Salon des Miroirs. Even amid that year’s recession, the bar sold for €2.7 million – more than ten times its low estimate – while Claude’s set of 15 mirrors brought in over €1.8 million on a low estimate of €700,000. Many see that sale as a tipping point in the market for Les Lalanne.
In the years that followed, the U.S. market for private sales of Les Lalanne expanded, as Kasmin Gallery staged a series of high-profile exhibitions: an installation of sculptures along Park Avenue in 2009, an immersive show at the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden in Florida in 2011, and, in 2012, transforming a Chelsea gas station into an open-air pasture for Sheep Station, featuring a flock of François-Xavier’s iconic Moutons.
The Sheep Station in Chelsea
Following the deaths of François-Xavier in 2008 and Claude in 2019, the market for Les Lalanne has only continued to rise – even as the couple’s large production volume meant that hundreds of works hit the auction block in the years since.
As of 2024, François-Xavier’s sculptures alone have generated more than US$100 million in global auction sales. One highlight: Troupeau d'Éléphants dans les Arbres (Herd of Elephants in the Trees), from the collection of beauty mogul Sydell Miller, sold for US$11.6 million against an estimate of US$4 million at Sotheby’s New York. Later that year, Christie’s New York held a dedicated sale to the artist, offering 70 animal sculptures that collectively realized more than US$58.9 million.
To date, four sculptures by François-Xavier have crossed the US$10 million mark at auction: the elephant table from Miller, Grand Rhinocrétaire II, the record-setting Rhinocrétaire I, and Bar aux Autruches, which sold at Sotheby’s Paris in May 2025 for over €11.1 million (around US$12.1 million) – far exceeding its €3-4 million estimate.
François-Xavier Lalanne | Troupeau d'Éléphants dans les Arbres | Sold: US$11,600,000, Sotheby's New York, November 2024
François-Xavier Lalanne | Bar aux Autruches (Ostrich Bar) | Sold: €11,112,500, Sotheby’s Paris, May 2025